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THE ABBEY CLASSICS 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



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THE VISION OF SIR LAUN- 
FAL BY JAMES RUSSELL 
LOWELL 



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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
WALTER TAYLOR FIELD 



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PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY 
SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK 



;fC0N6P r 
\wu U"Vi^ Received 

Ccpyngrrt Entry 



■wj,ufr ^ XXc., No. 

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COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY 
WALTER TAYLOR FIELD 



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LOWELL AND THE VISION 
OF SIR LAUNFAL 

^^B^HE year eighteen hundred forty-eight 
M marked the high tide of Lowell's literary 

%£^ enthusiasm. He was in the full vigor of 
young manhood— twenty- nine years old, 
and had been married four years to a wife whose 
sympathy inspired high ideals and stimulated 
him to large endeavor. But until this time he 
had not found himself. He had tried the law 
and had given it up; he had started a literary 
journal, The Pioneer, and it had failed; he had 
thrown himself into the pursuit of letters with all 
a young man's ardor, but had thus far done noth- 
ing to justify his choice. 

In this year, eighteen hundred forty-eight, 
however, he wrote four poems which immedi- 
ately established his fame. They were the First 
Series of the Biglow Papers, A Fable for Critics, 
The Present Crisis, and The Vision of Sir Launf al. 



The last of the four is, on the whole, the mos 
thoroughly representative, though the first shows 
more originality and presents a more striking 
phase of Lowell's genius. 

The Vision of Sir Launfal was written out of 
a full heart and completed, practically as it now 
stands, in forty-eight hours. Soon after it appeared 
Lowell wrote to his friend Briggs : 

" Last night I walked to Watertown over the 
snow, with the new moon before me and a sky 
exactly like that in Page's evening landscape. 
Orion was rising behind me, and as I stood on 
the hill just before you enter the village, the still- 
ness of the fields around me was delicious, broken 
only by the tinkle of a little brook which runs too 
swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of the 
brook in Sir Launfal was drawn from it. But why 
do I send you this description — like the bones of 
a chicken I had picked ? Simply because I was 
so happy, as I stood there, and felt so sure of 
doing something that would justify my friends." 

The poem is set in two landscapes represent- 
ing June and December, which symbolize two 



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periods of Sir Launfal's life, — the first, buoyant 
youth, in which he sets forth on the quest of the 
Grail; the second, wasted old age, in which he 
returns disappointed and humbled. Each of the 
two pictures contains also a contrasting note 
which has its symbolism in Sir Launfal's inward, 
spiritual state. The June sunshine beats in vain 
upon the cold wall of Sir Launfal's castle, and the 
springtime of youth avails not to warm into human 
sympathy the pride of Sir Launfal's heart. He 
tosses a piece of gold to the leper at the gate, but 
he has no thought of pity or of brotherhood. 

The winter scene finds its touch of contrast in 
the Christmas cheer which streams out from the 
castle windows into the cold of the Christmas 
night, and in the human love which glorifies the 
forlorn old age of the returning wanderer as he 
shares his last crust with the leper and fills for 
him a wooden bowl with water from the brook. 

We have, thus, two pictures, two stages of 
life, two spiritual conditions, two moral lessons — 
for in the first scene the leper spurns the gold 
without the human touch, while in the second 



he receives and is strengthened by the crust and 
the drink of water given in love and sympathy. 
At this point the moral lesson merges into a reli- 
gious lesson; the leper, glorified, stands before Sir 
Launfal in the image of the Christ, and the 
wooden bowl glows with supernal radiance; — 
it is seen to be the Grail. 

The Vision of Sir Launfal illustrates three of 
Lowell's strongest characteristics; his kinship with 
nature, his wide humanity and his moral force. 
He was a passionate lover of the woods, the fields, 
the birds and the sunshine. He says in one of 
of his letters, "How I do love the earth! I feel it 
thrill under my feet. I feel as if it were conscious 
of my love, — as if something passed into my 
dancing blood from it." 

His love for nature was equalled by his love 
for his fellow-man. Though reared amidst aristo- 
cratic influences, he always remained a democrat 
at heart. In his eyes it was fitting not only that 
Sir Launfal should break bread with the leper, 
but that Christ, himself, should appear in this 



vagrant outcast, proclaiming the mysterious kin- 
ship between the human and the divine. 

It was, however, as a moralist that Lowell 
made, perhaps, his deepest impress on the thought 
of his age. Descended from a line of ancestors 
who embodied the New England conscience, he 
placed morality above art and never hesitated 
when the choice lay between them. Doubtless 
if he had been less persistent as a preacher, he 
would have taken higher rank as a poet. That 
he realized this, is seen by his jocular reference 
to himself in A Fable for Critics : 

"The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
Till he learns the distinction t'wixt singing and preaching." 

But it is, after all, somewhat better to do good 
than to write prettily, and the world has need of 
more such poets. 

Two noteworthy qualities of Lowell, and only 
two, are absent in Sir Launf al, — humor and patriot- 
ism. Lowell's humor was genuine and rollicking, 
— so rollicking that Thackeray, upon reading the 
Biglow Papers, declared their author had a greater 



genius for comedy than any English poet ever had, 
and regretted that he should attempt serious verse. 
His patriotism was deep and all-embracing. It 
was not merely a sentiment, it was a passion. 
Whether in his New England home at Cam- 
bridge, or on the anti- slavery lecture platform 
before the war, or as the representative of his 
nation at the Court of St. James, he was always 
an American and always proud of it. 

Taken in the large, the impression of Lowell 
that remains with us when all specific attributes 
have become blurred, is that of his manliness. 
There was in his personality and is in his poems 
a virility that is one of the finest products of our 
free American life. And though his soul was full 
of visions, he seemed, Antaeus-like, to derive his 
strength from contact with the earth. He was not 
a good verse -maker. Rhyming came easily to him, 
but he was too often careless of form, and pre- 
ferred a strong expression to a poetical one. That 
he has left us several almost perfect bits of poetic 
craftsmanship shows what he could do when he 
chose, but he did not always choose. He trusted 



to inspiration, and it often brought him ideas 
clothed in the happiest phrases ; often it brought 
only the naked thought, which he made shift to 
dress in such words as came first to hand. 

We naturally associate Lowell with Longfel- 
low and Holmes, those two other Cambridge 
poets who represent culture, scholarship and the 
university spirit. The environment of all three 
was the same, the influences which wrought upon 
them were similar; yet, in feeling, Lowell was more 
closely allied to the homespun Whittier,— for he 
was, above all else, a reformer and a preacher of 
righteousness. 

He lacked Longfellow's fine sense of rhythm, 
but he wrote with a stronger hand; he did not 
have Longfellow's exquisite taste in the choice of 
words and figures, and he sometimes made mis- 
takes, but he always had a message, while Long- 
fellow often wrote to express a mood; both were 
true poets, but Longfellow was the greater artist, 
Lowell the more original thinker. Longfellow's 
verse is like a peaceful river, winding between 
banks of sunny verdure; Lowell's is a mountain 



stream, impetuous, now rolling headlong over 
itself, and again quiet, as it gathers momentum for 
another rush. 

The personalities of the two poets as revealed 
in their works as well as in their lives were also 
widely different. Both were polished, but Long- 
fellow was like the polished marble, pure, delicate, 
fine-grained, while Lowell was the granite of his 
native New England hills, coarser in texture and 
made up of heterogeneous elements,— less beau- 
tiful, perhaps, and less perfect, but more truly 
representative of our American thought and life. 

Walter Taylor Field. 



10 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



PRELUDE TO PART FIRST 

^^Tjk VER his keys the musing organist, 
Kaq Beginning doubtfully and far away, 

^^•^ First lets his fingers wander as they list, 

And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: 
Then, as the touch of his loved intrument 

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 

Along the wavering vista of his dream. 



Not only around our infancy 
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie ; 
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
We Sinais climb and know it not. 



11 



Over our manhood bend the skies; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies ; 

With our faint hearts the mountain strives; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite ; 
And to our age's drowsy blood 

Still shouts the inspiring sea. 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ; 

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 

We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ; 

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking : 

'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 
'Tis only God may be had for the asking; 

12 



No price is set on the lavish summer; 
June may be had by the poorest comer. 

And what is so rare as a day in June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays : 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
The flush of light may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

13 



Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer 

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 
Nov/ the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help 
knowing 

14 



That skies are clear and grass is growing; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are 
flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 
That the robin is plastering his house hard by; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
For other couriers we should not lack ; 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,— 
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving ; 
Tis as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 

Tis the natural way of living : 

15 



Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? 

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; 
The soul partakes the season's youth, 

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow? 




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PART FIRST 

i 

mY golden spurs now bring to me, 
And bring to me my richest mail, 
For to-morrow I go over land and sea 
In search of the Holy Grail; 
Shall never a bed for me be spread, 
Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
Till I begin my vow to keep; 
Here on the rushes will I sleep, 
And perchance there may come a vision true 
Ere day create the world anew." 
Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, 
Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 
And into his soul the vision flew. 

II 

The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 
In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees' 

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The little birds sang as if it were 
The one day of summer in all the year, 
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: 
The castle alone in the landscape lay 
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 
'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree, 
And never its gates might opened be, 
Save to lord or lady of high degree; 
Summer besieged it on every side, 
But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 
She could not scale the chilly wall, 
Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall 
Stretched left and right, 
Over the hills and out of sight; 
Green and broad was every tent, 
And out of each a murmur went 
Till the breeze fell off at night. 

Ill 

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger sprang, 

18 



Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 

In his siege of three hundred summers long, 
And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 

Had cast them forth : so, young and strong, 
And lightsome as a locust-leaf, 
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, 
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 

IV 
It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 

And morning in the young knight's heart; 
Only the castle moodily 
Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, 

And gloomed by itself apart; 
The season brimmed all other things up 
Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 



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V 

As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome 
gate, 

He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, 
Who begged with his hand and moaned as he 
sate; 

And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 
The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 

The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and 
crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 

Like a frozen waterfall; 
For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 

VI 
The leper raised not the gold from the dust: 
"Better to me the poor man's crust, 

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Better the blessing of the poor, 
Though I turn me empty from his door ; 
That is no true alms which the hand can hold; 
He gives nothing but worthless gold 

Who gives from a sense of duty; 
But he who gives a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight. 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness before. ,, 




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PRELUDE TO PART SECOND 

5l^ OWN swept the chill wind from the 

\3 mountain peak; 

Ji*r From the snow five thousand summers 

old; 
On open wold and hill-top bleak 

It had gathered all the cold, 
And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; 
It carried a shiver everywhere 
From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 
The little brook heard it and built a roof 
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; 
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
He groined his arches and matched his beams ; 
Slender and clear were his crystal spars 
As the lashes of light that trim the stars : 

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He sculptured every summer delight 
In his halls and chambers out of sight; 
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 
Long sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees 
Bending to counterfeit a breeze ; 
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
But silvery mosses that downward grew; 
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; 
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and 

here 
He had caught the nodding bullrush-tops 
And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
And made a star of every one : 
No mortal builder's most rare device 
Could match this winter-palace of ice; 
'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 

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In his depths serene through the summer day, 
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 

Lest the happy model should be lost, 
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 

By the elfin builders of the frost. 

Within the hall are song and laughter, 

The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, 
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 

With lightsome green of ivy and holly; 
Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide ; 
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; 
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 

Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 
And swift little troops of silent sparks, 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, 
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 

Like herds of startled deer. 

24 



But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 
Singing in dreary monotone, 
A Christmas carol of its own, 
Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was — "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 
The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window- slits of the castle old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 



25 



PART SECOND 

i 

^^W^HERE was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
■ IJ The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; 
^■P^ The river was dumb and could not speak, 

For the frost's swift shuttles its shroud had spun; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; 
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
As if her veins were sapless and old, 
And she rose up decrepitly 
For a last dim look at earth and sea. 

II 
Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 
For another heir in his earldom sate ; 

26 • 



An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 

He came back from seeking the Holy Grail ; 

Little he recked of his earldom's loss, 

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, 

But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 

The badge of the suffering and the poor. 

Ill 

Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 

Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 

For it was just at the Christmas time ; 

So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 

And sought for a shelter from cold and snow 

In the light and warmth of long ago ; 

He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 

O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 

Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, 

He can count the camels in the sun, 

As over the red-hot sands they pass 

To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 

27 



The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 
And with its own self like an infant played, 
And waved its signal of palms. 

IV 

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms; " — 

The happy camels may reach the spring 

But Sir Launfal sees naught save the grewsome 

thing, 
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 

V 

And Sir Launfal said,— "I behold in thee 
An image of Him who died on the tree ; 
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,— 
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and 
scorns, — 

28 



And to thy life were not denied 
The wounds in the hands and feet and side; 
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
Behold, through him, I give to thee ! " 

VI 

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 

And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 
Remembered in what a haughtier guise 

He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
When he caged his young life up in gilded mail 
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
The heart within him was ashes and dust; 
He parted in twain his single crust, 
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
And gave the leper to eat and drink; 
'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 

'Twas water out of a wooden bowl, — 
Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 

And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty 

soul. 

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VII 

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 

A light shone round about the place; 

The leper no longer crouched at his side, 

But stood before him glorified, 

Shining and tall and fair and straight 

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, . 

Himself the Gate whereby men can 

Enter the temple of God in Man. 

VIII 
His words were shed softer than leaves from the 

pine, 
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, 
That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; 
And the voice that was calmer than silence said, 
"Lo, it is I, be not afraid ! 
In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 

30 



Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; 
This crust is my body broken for thee, 
This water His blood that died on the tree ; 
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need ; 
Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,- 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

IX 
Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound: — 
"The Grail in my castle here is found! 
Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 
Let it be the spider's banquet- hall; 
He must be fenced with stronger mail 
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 



31 



X 

The castle gate stands open now, 

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 
As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; 

* No longer scowl the turrets tall, 
The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; 
When the first poor outcast went in at the door, 
She entered with him in disguise, 
And mastered the fortress by surprise ; 
There is no spot she loves so well on ground, 
She lingers and smiles there the whole year 

round ; 
The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 
Has hall and bower at his command ; 
And there's no poor man in the North Countree 
But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 



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